“I’m not going to apologize for the watch being mine. It was a gift. Even if the money—”
“Even if the money was mine,” Eleanor finished. “You can keep that sentence unfinished if you need to. I already finished it in July.”
Sloan’s eyes flicked up. “Are we ever going to be okay?”
Eleanor considered the question the way she considered contracts: for what it asked and for what it assumed. “Okay is a low bar and a moving target,” she said. “You can start by not treating my history like clutter. You can continue by remembering that this family is not your event to brand. Whether we get to okay after that is something time will tell, and time doesn’t work for free.”
Sloan almost smiled—not the smug birthday smile, something smaller and less armored. “Harrison said you’d say something like that.”
“Harrison is learning to listen.”